Mexican national Miguel Samaniego-Lopez killed two men and wounded another at a Wilmer nightclub in self-de fense, a jury decided Wednesday.

After less than four hours of deliberation, the Mobile County Circuit Court jury found Samaniego-Lopez not guilty on two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

Samaniego-Lopez, 30, who had been held in the Mobile County Metro Jail since shortly after his arrest more than a year ago, was expected to be heading for his home near Monterey, Mexico, to day.

"I have his passport," Mobile attorney Dom Soto said following the verdict. "I am going to give it to him, buy him a ticket, put him on a bus and tell him to leave town."

Samaniego-Lopez, who came to Mobile County last year under a government work program, was accused in the Sept. 30, 2000, shooting deaths of Phillip Daniel Pettus, 30, and Christopher Neal, 29, and wounding Neal's brother, 42-year-old Craig Christian.

The defendant admitted shooting the men but claimed self-defense, telling jurors on Tuesday he believed those men intended to harm him.

The incident occurred in the parking lot of the Country Club Lounge on Moffett Road after several men belligerently followed Samaniego-Lopez out of the bar, shoving him, according to witnesses.

Seconds later, the defendant testified, he opened fire with a .38-caliber revolver out of fear the men themselves were going for guns.

Following the verdict, as many family members of the dead men reacted with shock, Christian was overheard telling them that Samaniego-Lopez had his day in court and had admitted what he did. Now they had to put it behind them, Christian said.

Shortly afterward, he began crying.

In closing arguments Wednes day morning, Assistant District Attorney Jill Phillips characterized the shoving outside the club as "a light push ... a push is not deadly physical force." She told jurors that when accosted by the men, Samaniego-Lopez was first obligated to flee or "he could have turned around and fought" without using a weapon.

Lead prosecutor George Hardesty Jr., said the men had "asked him to leave" but had not threatened to kill Samaniego-Lopez.

"He fired first," Hardesty said of the defendant, and he accused defense attorneys of "reliving the Alamo" when they recalled evidence suggesting that the incident was initiated because several men in the bar resented Samaniego-Lopez's Mexican heritage.

Recalling that Christian, Neal and others surrounded and accosted Samaniego-Lopez in the bar a few hours before the shooting, Hardesty said that he, too, "would feel a little threatened there." Yet the defendant showed no sign that he was frightened and afterward continued to play pool, the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney John Cherry told jurors that .25-caliber semiautomatic shell casings were found in the parking lot after the shooting, indicating that someone else other than his client also was firing a gun that night.

He mocked prosecutors' claims that the men were merely "escorting" Samaniego-Lopez out of the bar that night.

Cherry told jurors they were obligated to consider Samaniego- Lopez's state of mind as the incident took shape.

"What did Miguel reasonably think was going to happen out there?" Cherry asked, recalling bar owner Lisa Perry's testimony that earlier that same night, Samaniego-Lopez saw another Mexican he didn't know brought into the bar after suffering a severe beating in the parking lot.

Perry later testified that six men surrounded Samaniego-Lopez at the bar, shoving and cursing him, accusing him of asking a white woman to dance.

The men who followed his client out of the bar were "planning to beat him up like the other fellow -- you know it," Cherry told jurors. "What they didn't count on was that he would defend himself."

NOTICE: In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for
research or educational purposes. We do our best, as well, to give credit to the
original news source who published these Guns Save Lives stories out of respect
and appreciation for their willingness to spread the word that Guns Save Lives
-- and when an original link is available, we ALWAYS send all our visitors to
read the original article on the original site where it was posted. God Bless
the Americans that publish these stories - for assisting Americans in hearing
the truth about guns saving lives.

QUOTES
TO REMEMBER

"Some people think that the Second Amendment is an outdated relic of an earlier time. Doubtless some also think that constitutional protections of other rights are outdated relics of earlier times. We The People own those rights regardless, unless and until We The People repeal them. For those who believe it to be outdated, the Second Amendment provides a good test of whether their allegiance is really to the Constitution of the United States, or only to their preferences in public policies and audiences. The Constitution is law, not vague aspirations, and we are obligated to protect, defend, and apply it. If the Second Amendment were truly an outdated relic, the Constitution provides a method for repeal. The Constitution does not furnish the federal courts with an eraser." --9th Circuit Court Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, dissenting opinion in which the court refused to rehear the case while citing deeply flawed anti-Second Amendment nonsense (Nordyke v. King; opinion filed April 5, 2004)

COPYRIGHT POLICY: The posting of copyrighted articles and other content, in whole or in part, is not allowed here. We have made an effort to educate our users about this policy and we are extremely serious about this. Users who are caught violating this rule will be warned and/or banned.
If you are the owner of content that you believe has been posted on this site without your permission, please contact our webmaster by following this link. Please include with your message: (1) the particulars of the infringement, including a description of the content, (2) a link to that content here and (3) information concerning where the content in question was originally posted/published. We will address your complaint as quickly as possible. Thank you.

NOTICE: The information contained in this site is not to be considered
as legal advice. In no way are Keep And Bear Arms .com or any of its agents responsible
for the actions of our members or site visitors. Also, because this web site is a Free
Speech Zone, opinions, ideas, beliefs, suggestions, practices and concepts throughout
this site may or may not represent those of Keep And Bear Arms .com. All rights reserved.
Articles that are original to this site may be redistributed provided they are left
intact and a link to http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com
is given. Click here for Contact Information for
representatives of KeepAndBearArms.com.

Thawte.com is the leading provider of
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and digital certificate solutions used by enterprises,
Web sites, and consumers to conduct secure communications and transactions over the
Internet and private networks.